Courtesy Andrew Wice
Madrid resident Andrew Wice is a screenwriter and author of seven novels, including To The Last Drop: A Novel of Water, Oppression and Rebellion. For his next project, Wice collaborates with legendary local musician Joe West for the first ever Madrid Film Festival, a gathering of locally produced films from any genre imaginable. Filmmakers are invited to submit films of any length that range from animation to zombie flicks to documentaries (submit to joewestmusic@hotmail.com with "submission" as the subject line by Monday July 23, extended as of July 14!). Submissions are free. The inaugural festival kicks off at the historic Engine House Theater (2846 Hwy. 14, Madrid, 473-0743) on Friday and Saturday Aug. 10 and 11, but we caught up with Wice ahead of time to pose a couple queries.
This is Madrid's first-ever film festival. What are your hopes and expectations for the event?
With no entry fee or formal restrictions, the idea is to encourage this exceptionally creative area to focus on filmmaking this summer. We hope this festival provokes people to submit a film they've recently made, or create a new one. Perhaps this suddenly announced deadline for submissions might strike unexpectedly like lightning, igniting a wildfire of creativity. Sorry, it's fire season.
What other projects have you worked on before this?
Joe West has been producing the gleefully macabre Theater of Death anthology series for six years now. We've both made short movies and are awed by film's sense-supremacy. I will soon be launching the Madrid Oral History Tour, a smartphone-based self-guided tour of Madrid with stories told by the people who lived them. Joe is a professional musician, and I'm primarily a writer, but we're both exploring new ways to tell stories.
How do you think this film festival will relate to the rest of the film culture in New Mexico?
I think this film festival will click with the growing film culture in New Mexico. The film industry remains one of the state's best assets. Short films are a great way to try out ideas and techniques. The current independent film culture is still aspirational but growing rapidly; the festival will give us an idea about how it is developing.
